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Denmark wants to push through Chat Control
- nayroclade 1y agoEnjoy democracy, EU-style
- gjsman-1000 1y ago[flagged]
- guywithahat 1y ago[flagged]
- gjsman-1000 1y agoIt is a joke, heavily sarcastic ("common-sense tech control"), but there is a grain of truth. It's inspired after all the victory laps HN had about the EU's moral superiority after GDPR, sideloading, USB-C, not being America in 2024, only for this to shatter all illusions. Flagged now, but HN has always been terrible at anything not delivered in a mundane tone of boredom.
- alephnerd 1y agoHN's tone changes depending on the time of day. HN appears very pro-EU in the mornings because that tends to align with the afternoon in much of Europe, just like how you tend to see more China or India content in the evenings when it's morning-afternoon in those markets. I also see more American political content around 5am-7am PT because that appears to be the time of day when EST and CST is at work. All the timezones basically converge around 7am-11am PT though.
- nawgz 1y ago> HN has always been terrible at anything not delivered Nah, you're being dishonest. Your "joke" doesn't really make sense though, the US clearly IS turning into a fascist state and whether or not another group has similar politic is legitimately completely irrelevant.
- budududuroiu 1y agoJust because the US is marginally ahead of the EU on the timeline. The EU welfare state is being dismantled for profit, 2016 Trumpian politics have finally landed on European shores, oligarchy, etc.
- saubeidl 1y agoJimmy Kimmel got suspended for his speech after the government threatened his employer.
- gjsman-1000 1y ago[flagged]
- saubeidl 1y agoThat is how the government is trying to save face now that Disney decided to stand up to them. Their threats are public, their later lies do not change them.
- gjsman-1000 1y ago[flagged]
- saubeidl 1y ago> Federal Communications Commission Chair Brendan Carr suggested Jimmy Kimmel should be suspended and said, “We can do this the easy way or the hard way,”
- myko 1y agoDidn't trump post truths about firing Kimmel and Colbert? this seems to be a pattern > Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences, This is true, but the 1st amendment applies to the government - when the government is limiting speech, it is time to be concerned–especially given trump's track record (attempt to usurp Biden with Jan 6th, political violence comments, "jokes" about a third term, etc.)
- guywithahat 1y ago[flagged]
- saubeidl 1y ago
- chmod775 1y agoAre you in the habit of just making shit up as you go? >The EU has no real free speech protections Yes they do[1] and even certain EU bodies expect that the law as proposed will likely be invalidated by courts[2]. >and many countries have been developing increasingly aggressive speech laws and police. I'd say invasive, rather than aggressive, but yes. This has always been true and will likely always be true. Governments try to expand their own powers. News at 11. >You can be arrested or fined for speaking objective truths in countries like Name a country in which this doesn't hold true. Revealing classified information, trade secrets, court-protected information, doxing, obscenity, ..., will get you in trouble in many places. >like Germany or the UK The UK isn't even in the EU anymore. In fact while they still were in the EU, the ECJ ruled parts of their Investigatory Powers Act unlawful[3]. I don't know how that adds up with the picture you're trying to paint. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12012P/TXT https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:12... [2] https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-8787-2023-INIT/en/pdf https://data.consilium.europa.eu/doc/document/ST-8787-2023-I... [3] https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/dec/21/eus-highest-court-delivers-blow-to-uk-snoopers-charter https://www.theguardian.com/law/2016/dec/21/eus-highest-cour...
- stackskipton 1y agoEU has always been more "nanny state" then US. EU voters IMO seem to believe that principle of their government is "keep the peace and tranquility" and if that means restricting speech to do so, they are ok with that decision.
- lucketone 1y agoPensions and social programs - yes. Invading private chat - no. My personal opinion, but lot of people are just unaware.
- edwinjm 1y agoYou would think the Danish are smarter than this.
- TheChaplain 1y agoThe Danes are smart, but history have repeatedly proven that people are deceptive, even the seemingly trustworthy ones that hands out promises for votes.
- nicce 1y agoThey have used Palantir for years. There is that.
- lucketone 1y agoDenmark is the embassy of American NSA in Europe.
- adventured 1y agoEuropeans don't get to blame the US for this. Chat Control is being widely pushed. The Europeans get to take responsibility for their own authoritarianism.
- int_19h 1y agoThe ruling elites on both sides of the Atlantic have been pushing for something like this for a long time now. It's not an either-or - they are mutually reinforcing.
- budududuroiu 1y agoThey are, for themselves. They’re probably leveraging this juicy Palantir contract to get the US to lift their boot off Greenland.
- hkon 1y agoDoes anyone really think it won't pass?
- saubeidl 1y agoIt might pass, but if it does, the courts will strike it down. Separation of powers still works in the EU.
- TheChaplain 1y agoIt will, in one form or another. And after some time there are enough boiled frogs for further privacy invasive measures.
- mvanbaak 1y agoOf course it will pass. Think of the children
- jMyles 1y agoIn the legislative sense, it might eventually pass. As has happened in every case so far (with increasing intensity and ease), the internet will route around it.
- Bender 1y agothe internet will route around it How will the internet route around client side scanning? Some here will not be affected but I suspect the masses would have a harder time assuming they are even aware that cell phones, Windows recall and Mac mediaanalysisd are performing scans. Most people do not install custom phone OS images.
- walterbell 1y ago> Mac mediaanalysisd are performing scans Would this work? https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/u17hsa/please_help_me_stop_mediaanalysisd_process/ https://www.reddit.com/r/MacOS/comments/u17hsa/please_help_m... sudo killall -STOP mediaanalysisd mediaanalysisd-access
- smartbit 1y agoAny protests planned?
- betaby 1y agoProtests are forbidden too.
- adamtulinius 1y agoThere was one this Sunday, but it wasn't even mentioned in the news.
- dkga 1y agoSo it has begun
- egorfine 1y agoBy whom? Normies cannot even grasp what we're talking about here, a bunch of nerds. Think of the children!
- zzzeek 1y ago[flagged]
- MaxikCZ 1y agoId sooner move to china than US
- wkat4242 1y agoYeah at least there you can be sure every byte of your communication is monitored :) I wouldn't move to either. Not sure where else though. Switzerland is even becoming anti privacy too.
- sterlind 1y agoI'm an American, and our politicians are starting to discuss forcibly institutionalizing all trans people. living my days out in a padded cell is not my idea of liberty, thank you. I'm getting out of here.
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 1y agoGive me your passport. I want in.
- sterlind 1y agowhat passport are you trading?
- Am4TIfIsER0ppos 1y agoUnfortunately a British one, expired Australian, plus a Belgian residence card.
- wkat4242 1y agoI'm so sorry this is happening to you and the rest of the community. And I don't get why they pick on the trans community so much. Apart from not aligning with their personal religious views, what else has a trans person ever done to a cis one? Most trans people I know are super respectful especially because they know what it's like to deal with bigotry every day. I mean when they go after drug gangs, at least there's some reason. Because they're a source of violence and misery. Even though it seems to be a thinly veiled excuse to go after brown skinned people instead.
- IlikeMadison 1y ago>Now Paris “on the whole” agrees with the draft. France welcomes both mandatory chat control and client-side scanning. A few months ago, a broad security law was passed by the National Assembly in France. Initially, this law contained provisions, including the scanning of private messages, which were removed from the main text by a large majority of lawmakers, as it was deemed too intrusive. The few officials (including Macron) who now claim that "France is OK with chat control" represent a minority that currently holds power in a country whose government was ousted less than two weeks ago. Crooks.
- homarp 1y agosee also https://tuta.com/blog/france-law-encryption https://tuta.com/blog/france-law-encryption
- aprilfoo 1y agoAccording to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_European_Union, "legal acts include regulations, which are automatically enforceable in all member states": any move by national parliaments would be overruled. Interesting that this national law was pushed by people in an alliance around Macron: the same team which might sign the opposite for the EU. Just a drop in an ocean of nonsense, from where such a dangerous bill might emerge.
- boltzmann-brain 1y agoIt's not hard to imagine why. They want to spy on their subjects, and don't want to be told how to do it. Hence spying yes, EU no.
- boltzmann-brain 1y ago> Crooks. There's a bunch of people organizing against those crooks on the OG Stop Killing Games discord. Just type "stopkillinggames" into Discord's invite box. One interesting note: The group has even identified a suspected Russian spy network tied to the Russian telco MTS. MTS paid a close to $1B fine for unsavoury business in Uzbekistan [1] and is known to operate GFW and similar tech [2] in Russia, Ukraine, Armenia, Turkmenistan and Belarus [3] for example. The company is trying to get at people's biometrics, by posing as a KYC / Online Safety Act compliance company. [4] They probably do provide the services, but one can imagine where the data is also going. As a parallel thread mentions, anything related to Chat Control and other Internet control things immediately becomes a target for state actors trying to undermine democracy. [5] In my opinion, it is also often initiated and pushed for by them. [1] https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-s-mts-to-pay-850-million-to-settle-uzbek-bribery-case/29809370.html https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-s-mts-to-pay-850-million-to-s... [2] https://www.techradar.com/news/data-leak-reveals-how-russia-uses-telecoms-for-surveillance https://www.techradar.com/news/data-leak-reveals-how-russia-... [3] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mobile-telesystems-ojsc https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mobile-telesystems-o... [4] (link works after joining said discord) https://discord.com/channels/1281358651470381097/1400600992134991962/1416560593342824551 https://discord.com/channels/1281358651470381097/14006009921... [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353056 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45353056
- atomic128 1y agoIf you have been watching the world in 2025 you know Tor is gradually becoming essential. Install the Tor Browser and search for free speech in the hidden service HTTP response dumps here: https://rnsaffn.com/zg4/ https://rnsaffn.com/zg4/ Not censored, not safe for work, sorry.
- whatshisface 1y agoIt sounds like chat control will require Tor clients in Europe to scan traffic before it is encrypted and report material to (local?) governments. This could be enforced, on phones at least, with Android's new developer key signing requirements that are slated to be phased in one year from now (in 2026).
- perelin 1y agoTor on mobile devices (at least iOS, Android) is not recommended anyway. Guess true Linux phones might finally see their hour.
- lordnacho 1y agoWhat I don't understand is, why don't the authorities think the actual bad guys will avoid the surveillance? It seems to me that organized crime will find their own solution, and the rest of us will occasionally have a snooping policeman checking our private messages. It's not unknown, even in Denmark, that people who are given access to private data will abuse it, eg snooping on ex girlfriends, that kind of thing. Why do people think this chat control thing will be effective?
- slaw 1y agoIt is never about bad guys or protect the children. It is a political control.
- timschmidt 1y agoI think most people, if pressed, would share your evaluation. However, even though surveillance is always marketed and sold as a tool for law enforcement, I think the people proposing such bills are aware that it's primary use is for political control, power, and espionage. Safety is the bait in the bait and switch. So the measure is not whether or not surveillance actually works for making people safer. But whether or not it actually works as bait.
- boltzmann-brain 1y agoWhile it's easy to start believing this is the only motive, the truth of the matter is that a lot of stupid people do crime. So even if you only catch the stupid criminals, you still catch a bunch of criminals. And I mean _stupid_. You wouldn't believe how intensely stupid some of those people are, but read some court records and you will come away deeply surprised we are making it as a species. But yes, there is no doubt that what you mention is a major motivator for at least some of the people pushing for it. P.S. I'm not saying "stupid => does crime", please don't read that into what I said above - I'm just saying that `#("stupid and also does crime")` is a large number.
- timschmidt 1y ago> While it's easy to start believing this is the only motive No one said that. Files leaked by Snowden describe NSA's activities as durable, even against legal attack, thanks to layers upon layers of digital, procedural, legal, and other forms of defense in depth. Among them, plausible deniability and dual use technologies. You have pointed toward both. So their tactics worked on you. > But yes, there is no doubt that what you mention is a major motivator for at least some of the people pushing for it. Don't forget that ubiquitous surveillance is exactly the tool most useful for blackmailing or discrediting opponents as well.
- puppycodes 1y agoI didn't think Denmark was a pseudo-democracy but you learn new things every day.
- type0 1y agoTechnically it's a Monarchy
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- int_19h 1y agoWhat makes you believe this isn't an example of democracy in action, though?
- AngryData 1y agoIll believe it when I see people directly vote to full surveillance of all their chat and speech. Just because politicians in a democracy want something that doesn't mean the voters want it too. The voters are voting for people, not on policy, and that holds true even if we were able to ignore all the manipulations and external influences upon choosing political representatives.
- ceving 1y agoThe problem is not Denmark. It is the lack of democracy in the EU itself. The European Commission has no democratic legitimacy.
- mk89 1y agoAnd if you say that, you're far right wing lately. That's what we have become.
- whatshisface 1y agoWho would be allowed to configure the scanners and receive the reports, an EU security body, or the member states?
- pessimizer 1y agoI would have to assume Palantir or Crowdstrike's new European divisions.
- alephnerd 1y agoThe EU and most conglomerates within the EU have been using Crowdstrike for almost a decade now. If they don't use CRWD they use Microsoft Defender, PANW Cortex, or SentinelOne.
- pessimizer 1y agoI had no idea, I was just trying to be snarky and pick the worst possibilities on the planet.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- downrightmike 1y agoI can't wait to find out what politicians are sending!
- Sharlin 1y agoThe text, of course, excludes politicians and other important people(tm) from being monitored.
- epolanski 1y agoExactly those that should be subject to scrutiny.
- stephen_g 1y agoJust making sure everybody realises (because the comment sounds a tad sarcastic), but that comment is completely true - the politicians have quite seriously exempted themselves and certain types of people.
- dkga 1y agoWhat other certain types of people?
- downrightmike 1y agoThe guys that get them things without asking questions
- stephen_g 1y agoI don’t exactly recall all of them but I believe it was people doing things to do with “national security” so things like intelligence orgs, certain government orgs, military etc…
- jbstack 1y agoWill Chat Control be retrospective? I.e. once it's implemented will governments have access to all previous communications or just those from that point onwards? Also how does it work geographically? Is it based on my location, where my phone was made/bought, something else...?
- tdrz 1y ago1984
- sgc 1y agoCan somebody explain to me how backdooring every app does not lead to the real risk of an entire population's bank accounts being emptied, or similar more hidden but widespread attacks that absolutely cripple any country doing this? Almost immediately, enemy State actors will have almost as complete access as the government passing the law; blackmail will become trivial; they could just subtly weaken adversaries nonstop over the years for a more patient return, etc? It just seems ridiculously dangerous. How is having a single point of failure (or handful of points of failure) for an entire country or continent defensible simply from the perspective of opsec?
- zer00eyz 1y ago> Can somebody explain to me how backdooring every app does not lead to the real risk of an entire population's bank accounts being emptied, or similar more hidden but widespread attacks that absolutely cripple any country doing this? We already had this debate once before: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clipper_chip The answer is that it is a bad idea. This also recently came up when huntress exposed what it could do with its tool: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45183589 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45183589 and then failed to understand why this might be a bad thing. Or you know crowdstrike getting rolled in a supply chain attack: https://www.ox.security/blog/npm-2-0-hack-40-npm-packages-hit-in-major-supply-chain-attack/ https://www.ox.security/blog/npm-2-0-hack-40-npm-packages-hi... The government wants a back door to spy on its citizens, not realizing that any back door you build is rife to be exploited by anyone.
- wmf 1y agoWhy haven't those things already happened? Many messaging apps including SMS and Telegram are centralized without E2E.
- dugite-code 1y agoThis was literally headline news last year for SMS https://www.npr.org/2024/12/17/nx-s1-5223490/text-messaging-security-fbi-chinese-hackers-security-encryption https://www.npr.org/2024/12/17/nx-s1-5223490/text-messaging-...
- addandsubtract 1y agoContact your representatives and sign Mozilla Foundation’s petition: https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/campaigns/tell-the-eu-dont-break-encryption-with-chat-control/ https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/campaigns/tell-the-eu-d...
- josefritzishere 1y agoSo this is the future? The government spies on all communications 24/7 like the stasi? Where does civilization go from here?
- _ink_ 1y agoEventually revolution.
- AnimalMuppet 1y agoThat's going to be harder if the government spies on everything.
- AngryData 1y agoMaybe, but too harsh of crackdowns might also accelerate the revolution timeline. You don't need organization for a revolution to collapse a nation, or even any idea of what anyone wants to try and revolution towards, you just need a couple percentage of the population to be pissed off enough to start wanton destruction.
- type0 1y agoWorse than Stasi. Denmark spied on Swedish politicians for US. I have zero confidence that "the Worlds least corrupt country" is actually the least corrupt.
- DoingIsLearning 1y agoThe online Stasi analogies are simplistic. This is (mostly) about Tech companies' money, namely: - Palantir Technologies - 'not-for-profit' Thorn > The Commission’s failure to identify the list of experts as falling within the scope of the complainant’s public access request constitutes maladministration. [0] > ... the complainant contended that the precision rate of technologies like those developed by the organisation are often overestimated. It is therefore essential that any technical claims made by the organisation concerned are made public as this would facilitate the critical assessment of the proposal. [1] > The Commission presented a proposal on preventing and combating child sexual abuse, looking in particular at detecting child pornography. In this context, it has mentioned that support could be provided by the software of the controversial American company Palantir... [2] > Is Palantir’s failure to register on the Transparency Register compatible with the Commission’s transparency commitments? [2] (Palantir only entered the Transparency Registry in March 2025 despite being a multi million vendor for Europol and European Agencies for more than a decade) > No detailed records exist concerning a January meeting between European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and the CEO of controversial US data analytics firm Palantir [3] > Kutcher and CEO Julie Cordua held several meetings with EU officials from 2020 to 2023 - before the former stepped down from his role - including European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson, and European Parliament President Roberta Metsola.[4] > The Ombudsman further concluded that Thorn had indeed influenced the legislative process of the CSAM regulation. “It is clear, for example, from the Commission’s impact assessment that the input provided by Thorn significantly informed the Commission’s decision-making. The public interest in disclosure is thus self-evident. [4] > EU Ombudsman Emily O’Reilly has announced that she has opened an investigation into the transfer of two former Europol officials to the chat control surveillance tech provider Thorn. [5] [0] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/176658 https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/decision/en/176658 [1] https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/recommendation/en/179395 https://www.ombudsman.europa.eu/en/recommendation/en/179395 [2] https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2024-000165_EN.html https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/E-9-2024-00016... [3] https://www.euractiv.com/news/commission-kept-no-records-on-davos-meeting-between-von-der-leyen-and-palantir-ceo/ https://www.euractiv.com/news/commission-kept-no-records-on-... [4] https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/07/18/european-ombudsman-slams-commission-for-secretive-approach-to-child-sexual-abuse-law https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/07/18/european-ombudsman-... [5] https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-eu-ombudsman-launches-investigation-into-europol/ https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/chat-control-eu-ombudsman-l...
- epolanski 1y agoIronic how the people that should actually prove their transparency, the politicians working for us, are excluded.
- epolanski 1y agoOkay, but who prevents me to exchanging a private key irl and sending encrypted messages over Whatsapp?
- type0 1y agoWhatsapp would turn off that feature for EU countries the same day the law goes through
- layla5alive 1y agoThey mean doing their own encryption prior to sending the message to whatsapp with a one time pad - a one time pad is secure - but the answer would be "a boatload of inconvenience"
- rightbyte 1y agoIs there some way to automate that via a third party app?
- epolanski 1y agoUrsula von Der Leyen will go down history as the worse EU representative ever.
- ceving 1y agoDo not say the name of You-Know-Who in the public!
- munksbeer 1y agoShe isn't mentioned in the article at all. What is the context for your statement here?
- epolanski 1y agoShe is one of the politicians who's met Palantir and Thorn more. Also, how she bent for the 15% tariff to US while we apply none was another disgusting moment of selling out EU.
- lerp-io 1y agoits okay, they promise not to scan encrypted content.
- ljsprague 1y ago[flagged]
- sterlind 1y agoam I understanding correctly that Chat Control will use AI to scan the text of every private message, and automatically report suspected "grooming attempts" to police? how the hell do they think that will work? does the AI know that the message recipient is a minor? that the message sender is an adult? that "want to meet up tonight?" is sent by a pedophile to a stranger's kid for an illicit rendezvous, and not by a dad to his son to work on a science fair project? this is just bananas crazy. so many lives will be ruined by false positives. the chilling effect will be like an Arctic snowstorm. and any actual groomers will find ways to disable it.
- storus 1y agoWhat if we went the other direction - push chat control but on government and rich folks? Make them fully transparent as the price of power/influence, and leave normies opaque?
- betaby 1y agoWho is `we` in this context?
- maxdo 1y agoYou westerners are way too delusional about the world we’re living in. I just had a conversation with American colleagues about life in Europe. And the things that stood out were “cookies policy,” trash recycling, and such trivialities. Meanwhile, Europe is already at war. China openly wants to dismantle the good life Americans take for granted. Their news is full of militaristic propaganda, day after day. This isn’t the 90s. It’s not the 1950s either. You didn’t “win” the war. You cant build, you can’t manufacture. And yet you talk about freedom? Reality is going to catch up very soon. Many of you will lose not just your comfortable lives but your freedom too. Take Denmark’s policy with LLM monitoring. What’s wrong with that? China and Russia do it already — and they benefit. That’s how you prevent both external and internal threats. That’s how you build a strong state. If your adversary monitors and you don’t, you’re already in a losing position. And don’t forget — the subject country is directly part of the brewing conflict in the Baltic Sea with Russia.
- speff 1y agoManufacturing: > The United States is the world's second-largest manufacturer after the People's Republic of China with a record high real output in 2024 of $2.913 trillion [0] I believe the US' manufacturing capability is the core of your comment and I also believe it's incorrect. Sure we don't manufacture fast-fashion or junk products and we may have lost quite a bit of tribal knowledge[1] with respect to that. But it's nothing that can't be re-gained. And the benefits China and the Russia get from their spying programs? Americans by-and-large simply do not care about them. Denmark can do whatever they want with their tech as long as their citizens approve. Like you said, they're in a different position given their geographic location - thus, they have different priorities. But Americans do not feel like they have such an existential threat so they are (generally) not willing to give up their privacy. Whether "reality" catches up to your predictions remains to be seen. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_St... [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY
- int_19h 1y ago> If your adversary monitors and you don’t, you’re already in a losing position. You can make this same argument about any authoritarian or totalitarian policy.
- shirro 1y agoWhen all the commercial software is backdoored the criminals are going to use open source alternatives. Suddenly all my devices, my family and the tech community are in the cross-hairs of law enforcement. I don't want to be one of the new victims of another war on drugs mess. We have enough real criminals for the courts and law enforcement to handle without creating a whole new lot out of law abiding people.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- budududuroiu 1y agoVaroufakis had a very important take: that Europe needs to learn to survive post-EU. From the Euroskeptics to the anti-imperialists, everyone wants the EU dead. Sadly, I tend to agree with them more and more.
- Zanfa 1y ago> Varoufakis had a very important take: that Europe needs to learn to survive post-EU. Wasn't he the Greek Minister of Finance that was supposed to be a game theory genius, but was completely incapable of understanding why his proposals were politically impossible?
- budududuroiu 1y agoWhy politically impossible? You can argue economically impossible, but the referendum overwhelmingly voted to reject the bailout package
- Zanfa 1y agoPolitically, because he was trying to negotiate against austerity measures with zero leverage and no realistic alternatives. Given the consensus on the requirements between the countries footing the bailout and the general public (outside of Greece), it was clear from the start that his position was unworkable.
- munksbeer 1y agoGreece already received something like 50% haircuts on the debt. Politically Greek people voting on something has no influence on the rest of the population of the EU. If Greece had more of its debt written off then other countries would want the same. Hence it wasn't politically possible for those on the other side of the negotiations to give this to Greece. The only real hand Greece had was to simply refuse the bailouts and refuse to pay the debts. In that case they would have been cut off from international bond markets, they would have had to renounce the Euro and start using a different currency. All that was possible, but the Greek government could see the obvious - it would have been far worse than what was on offer.
- dkga 1y agoI think the Swiss ought to be very scared as well. Lived there for many years and for some reason every website I visited was following EU rules when servicing Switzerland visitors. Maybe they can’t technically separate what’s what, or choose to do this, but if Chat Control passes then essentially all of Swiss messaging (and Liechtenstein’s) gets to be overseen too.
- earthdeity 1y agoYou can go to any number of sites (here's a nice one https://webencrypt.org/openpgpjs/ https://webencrypt.org/openpgpjs/), and encrypt a message. You can exchange public keys over any text channel. You can then send encrypted messages over that text channel. Anyone who really needs to send encrypted messages, trivially can. Of course, many criminals won't, but should we all sacrifice our privacy for such a pathetic measure of security?
- 8fingerlouie 1y agoChatControl proposes "on device" scanning, meaning before/after encryption, thereby making encryption useless. You could still have an airgapped computer where you encrypt your messages with GnuPG or similar, and then send those.
- rdm_blackhole 1y agoYou know what, let it go through! If the European people are too stupid to stop it and simply keep on voting for the parties who support this sort of law, then so be it. The criminals will move on to other means of communication, the privacy minded folks will move to sideloaded Signal-like apps and take their friends and families with them if possible and the rest will just have to learn to live under the new EU-Stasi regime and watch their privacy being stripped a little more day by day.
- grimblee 1y agoI had a thought reading the comments here but isn't this a ploy to break the EU, there is no way individual population will abide by it, this will increase recentment against the EU and trigger exits. Too many actors would benefit from this to make clear accusations but the fact it is American companies proposing their technologies is a first indication.
- Gud 1y agoTime to dismantle the EU. The writing has been on the wall for a long time. I moved from a country that used to have strong privacy laws(Sweden) to another that still has them. Although Switzerland is far from perfect, it is a stable democracy with protections for its citizens. The problem is when you build these gigantic political organisations, like the EU or USA, there is nowhere to go when the political elite decides to ram down the ideology du jour down your throat. The world should be moving towards decentralisation, direct democracy and voluntary cooperation, but unfortunately, the opposite is the case. Peace
- criticalfault 1y agoI think this is naive thinking. Do that and you will be ass raped by stronger powers in record time... if we don't start a war in eu amongst ourselves. The eu was established as an economic union trying to prevent war in Europe and it has been very successful in that. Going the other way would probably cause havoc. Look at Hungary and Slovakia even with war on our doorstep. I am of the opinion that the EU needs to federalize. It needs to look as one country from the outside, while having independent countries on the inside. The goal here is not to be overwhelmed by the economic and military might of china. Build up resiliency and self sufficiency and keep democracy alive, which seems to be on the decline everywhere. The question is how not to end up in a totalitarian regime, which chat control is about. It doesn't and it never will be about the children. The EU is necessary.
- rightbyte 1y agoI don't think these superpower dreams are very good for neither for the EU population or democracy.
- Gud 1y agoMeanwhile the most prosperous nations in Europe are not part of the EU. It is good you are asking how to avoid the EU turning into a totalitarian state, which is the way it is currently heading. I don’t think it’s possible.
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- thefz 1y agoIf the technology is flawless why is there -by design- an exemption for the highest powers of the state, for security reasons?
- KodeNinjaDev 1y agoIt is worth noting, that there is pushback, protests et cetera in Denmark, so hopefully this does not result in anything.
- ranguna 1y agoAs a European, I don't mind this getting passed anymore. I'll just go around it like I do for many other laws. Enforcing laws in the EU is a total joke, even if this passes, no one will care. Signal will probably add an option to circumvent this like they have for other laws in countries that block signal itself. So, Europe, if you really want this, go ahead and spy on the majority of the people, I'll just keep using signal or something else that respects my privacy, even if it's "illegal" by your standards (again, like I already do for many other laws). If the story is different this time around and they double down on enforcing this, I'll just leave to Switzerland, if they do the same, I'll go somewhere else. Or I'll become an activist, I've actually been kinda bored of everyday life, maybe fighting the "system" will be fun for a change. I don't care anymore, there'll always be a way to do what whatever me and those close want, as long as we are not hurting anyone.
- egorfine 1y agoSignal will stop sending confirmation SMSes to european phone numbers, unfortunately.
- ranguna 1y agoSource?
- egorfine 1y agohttps://mastodon.world/@Mer__edith/112535616774247450 https://mastodon.world/@Mer__edith/112535616774247450
- ranguna 1y agoSorry, I can't really find out where it says they'll stop sending confirmation SMSes in that post, in the blog post linked in that post and in that post's comments.
- ceving 1y agoCui bono?
- munksbeer 1y agoClient side scanning of the device, before messages are encrypted and sent on the wire. Think of the other implication to this - now these countries who adopt it have the means to spy on communications from every person in the world who communicates with an EU citizen. It's just completely bonkers from start to finish.
- burnerzzzzz 1y agolol, all the americans on this site giving their take our how our politics work or what motivates our politicians is always entertaining… Guys, our Justice Minister is not trying to spy on citizens. He is not some cartoon villain.. He is just incompetent. He doesn’t understand the technical arguments. He wants to curb the distribution of child abuse material (who wouldn’t) and does not understand that you can’t make backdoors for the police only https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/viden/teknologi/analyse-derfor-holder-hummelgaards-udsagn-om-kryptering-ikke https://www.dr.dk/nyheder/viden/teknologi/analyse-derfor-hol...